Appetite for Destruction

Paleontologist Peter Ward explains how life's tendency toward self-destruction has led to massive extinction events in Earth's history. What does the past -- and the smell of rotten eggs -- have to teach us about the fate of humanity?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. Accompanied by Lynn Koplitz, professional comedian. Today, we're going to be talking, well, we titled this Appetite for Destruction, which is all about ways-

• 0:35Speaker 01

  My dating life.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about all the ways Earth wants to kill us. Now, the astro-

• 0:42Speaker 01

  My dating life.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The astrophysicist, you know, we have our own list of ways the universe wants to kill us. And I don't think much about Earth as a hazardous place. But there are people out there who do.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like people who see the fossil record. Like paleontologists. People who dig up dead animals.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Awesome. We have some for the show, Dewey.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed. But I-

• 1:07Speaker 01

  You know where all the best people are, Neil.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We dig them out, we find them, we know where they are, we know where they've been, we know where they're going. You know, in terms of planet-wide catastrophe, in astrophysics, one of the most deadly things out there is an asteroid impact. And people say, "Oh, they won't affect us. It'll happen in the next election cycle, or it happened to the dinosaurs." Do you know how much we plow through every day? We plow through nearly 100 tons of meteors a day.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A day. If you go out at night and see shooting stars, add it all up, every spot on Earth, it comes to about 100 million tons.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Where do they all land?

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I say 100 million? Sorry. 100 tons. Not 100 million. I'm sorry. But still a lot.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  You had me at million, you had me at 100.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So it is, it is huge. It is huge, and it's bad. And most of them are little, and they burn up in the atmosphere, and it's not a problem. It's the big ones that can create planet-wide catastrophe. We used to think it's big enough, it makes a crater, if you happen to be standing where the crater got made, you're fried. Well, not fried. You're vaporized. Okay? Okay. Then we learned that if you make a crater, you're changing the atmosphere of the Earth because some of that crust goes into the atmosphere, plus it creates heat that burns forests, and you change, you change the climate. And so it was not until we studied asteroids hitting Earth that we had any kind of deep understanding of how climate can affect the entire stability of life on Earth. This is what we learned.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  This is very interesting.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what we learned. And what we need here is our favorite Bill Nye to set the mood for the show.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you ready for my boy?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Nye, let's see what he has to say on the subject of extinction.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Almost every species that's ever lived here on Earth is not here anymore. They're almost all gone, extinct. You and I are a trace of the 1% left over after 3 billion years of evolution. And you might think, all that time and we are it? Actually, we're it right now. Just by way of example, the ancient dinosaurs were it in their day, or days, about 130 million years' worth, and we've barely been here 1% of that. And there's simply no reason to think that we Homo sapiens are going to turn out any differently. We too will disappear, though I admit, there's no hurry. In fact, if you're like me, and I know I am, I'd like humans to go extinct as slowly

• 3:30Speaker 02

  as possible, with perhaps a few exceptions. What got the ancient dinosaurs was a big impacting object from space and its concomitant, climate change. We might be headed for the same result without the rock on the head because climate change is serious business, especially for us high on the food chain humans. But by understanding our Earth as a planet in space, we just might be able to delay our otherwise natural extinction. Let's give it a try. For StarTalk Radio, I'm Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he actually use the word "concomitant"?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  He did, and something happened. Bill Nye sounds like he's on some sort of like downer, like he was very calm and quiet.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He wasn't manic.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  He wasn't as manic, I guess, when he's talking about Earth's destruction and kind of brings him down.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, maybe so, maybe so. Well, it turns out, he knows all about asteroids. I know all about asteroids, but what I don't know as much about is ways that Earth wants to kill us. And I had to find someone who's an expert on this, and it's Professor Peter Ward. He's a paleontologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and he thinks about this stuff all the time. He's not only a paleontologist...

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Sounds like a great guy to have for dinner.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not only a paleontologist, he's a biologist and I count him, I give him some astro credits as well because he thinks about the role of the universe as well. But he doesn't think we should be worrying about asteroids. He's got other, a list of-

• 4:55Speaker 01

  He says the planet itself has a problem.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has it out for us.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  They have a problem down here.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Down here, on Earth. And let's find out, let's find out how he thinks that way.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, astrophysicists are not guiltless with regard to scaring people. We've got asteroids that we're tracking that we know have Earth in our sights. And Hollywood reminds us that these things have happened in the past and will happen again.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Thank God for Bruce Willis.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I got him on speed dial for the next time.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Save me Bruce, here comes another asteroid.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I saw both movies. I saw Armageddon with Bruce and of course, the other one, which had, we got most of its science right, um, which was Deep Impact, of course. So I know how to take out life on Earth with methods of death and destruction that the universe provides. But I understand that you're telling me Earth is no less hostile to life on Earth, which of course is opposite everyone's sort of stereotype of Earth being this haven for life in the cosmos.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Hey, look, if you look at the fossil record, it's just littered with dead bodies. Lots and lots of bones, lots of fossils through time.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fossilized dead bodies.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise you found some other place.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Every once in a while, it's more than just dead bodies, it's piles of dead bodies. We have these short-term, really nasty catastrophes in the past.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twenty years ago, fifty years ago, million years ago?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Hundreds of millions of years ago, two sixty-five million years ago was the last big, big one.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are major extinction episodes?

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, mass extinctions.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I know how many asteroids are flying around. I have a pretty good sense of how often they're gonna hit Earth. So I can hand you an asteroid anytime you need to take out, anytime you need to assault life on Earth. So are you using him or not?

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, look, in nineteen eighty, there was a great discovery, the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. And then for the next twenty years, we paleontologists decided everything must have been killed by asteroids.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not? Like, I'm handing you for free, I'm giving it to you, so use it.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And that's why the two movies came out.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  It was a consequence of all of us guys finding the dead bodies that you guys, the astronomers, threw at us.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  I mean, this is collaboration of death here.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's gonna kill us next time?

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the bad news. It turns out that in the end, we can only find one of these mass extinctions having been caused by rocks from space, and that was the dinosaurs.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and the rest are caused by what?

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Al Gore territory. Global warming.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna get all Al Gore on me now.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  The Earth was Al Gored.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's gonna, that's my interview with Peter Ward in my office a few months ago. And there's much more of that, of course, where he gets into detail.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  He's not someone you want to hang out with before bed.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  It's a little scary.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He sounds a little gleeful, though, as he speaks about it. You know, they're five-

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because he has work, as long as things are gonna, he's got something to talk about.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He gets paid. Yeah, so there are five major extinction episodes in the history of the fossil record, but the two big ones that we think of is the one that ended the Cretaceous period, and that was what we call the KT extinction, 65 million years ago. That's the famous one that took out T-Rex.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  And where is the KT extinction in the lineup of the big five?

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that, okay, it's not one of the most severe ones. In fact, it's down the list a bit, because only 70% of all species went extinct from that.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so let me talk like every man, like my mom at home.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  My question is, then if there were major, huge extinctions before the KT, and we bounced back?

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  What's the big, if we get wiped out again?

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It depends on who's the "we" that's bouncing back. That's the difference.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Oh, you're saying like, cabbage will come back and we won't?

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. It's not everybody comes back after it. And so the biggest one on record-

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Cabbage with tails.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's scary. Did you see Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? It's a movie.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got another subject ready to be movied. So another great extinction episode was what we call the Permian Triassic extinction, and it's the PT extinction. That's the biggest ever. All right, that happened about 250 million years ago. It killed 96% of all marine species and 70% on land. So all told, it was about 90% of all species of life on Earth. And that was a bad one. That was a, and that one-

• 8:51Speaker 01

  You think?

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no one can find-

• 8:54Speaker 01

  96% of all species on Earth, that was kind of bad.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one can, no one can find-

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Sorry, genius.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An implicating asteroid for that. So this is what sent Peter Ward back to the drawing board.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Oh, so you're saying it wasn't an asteroid, it was just Earth, something just happened?

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That one, and that got him thinking a little-

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And that was the biggie.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That what, so let's find out how he connects the fact that there's no asteroid record of that extinction with other-

• 9:18Speaker 01

  You got me hooked now, that's interesting.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's see where he's got to say about this. My interview with Peter Ward.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Gaia is the Greek name for Mother Earth. The Gaia hypothesis from the great James Lovelock suggests-

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The biologist, James Lovelock.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Yes, and the astrobiologist in a way, because James Lovelock really is an astrobiologist. He was the first to look at Mars' atmosphere and say, "You know, there's probably not life there." Because if there were life there, we would see record of it in the atmosphere, as Earth shows the presence of life. And that is astrobiology. So Lovelock says that life makes a planet better for life. This is a very nice deal. Life comes along, it changes elemental cycling, it changes the nature of the planet, it changes the way in which carbon and sulfur and phosphorus move through the system, and makes it better for more life.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, it didn't occur to me to think of it this way, but typically, we ask ourselves, "Let's find a planet that could sustain life." So you'd want to look for a planet that, life as we know it. So you'd look for a planet that might have oxygen, but what you're saying is, it would only have oxygen if it already had life. So you can't find a brand-new, spanking brand-new, fresh planet that has conditions suitable for life, because life made the conditions suitable for itself.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really terraforming. We keep thinking, "Let's go Earth-like Mars and make Mars Earth-like."

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Terraforming, like, turn Mars into a place like Earth, an Eden, and then we go all move there, after we trash the Earth.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  The only way to do that, though, is with lots and lots of microbes and billions of years, and this whole thought that we could do it really quickly, turn red Mars to green Mars through machines or whatever. It's, uh, you need the great periods of time.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Gaia hypothesis, spelled G-A-I-A. That was, uh, it's got a lot of mileage out there in the biological community. The assertion that life is good for life, that life creates conditions on Earth that life likes, and that if Earth goes out of equilibrium, life brings it back in. This is very, very maternal. It's a maternal philosophy.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I know Gaia, she is maternal. She lives in DC, she's my friend.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's your friend.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  No, wait, I have a question.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So what he was saying about Mars, about we, about trying to create, we'll never make the red planet green?

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if we do, it would take, like, millions of years. It's not just something-

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Well, of course, because it's Mars, and Mars is a big gas ball, everybody knows that.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, gas ball?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Not gas, whatever, dry, whatever. It's not right, high, I don't know. Neil, I'm not the astrophysicist, clearly. Here's my point.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's more cold, dry.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Isn't there another planet that's closer to us? There are.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars, among all planets, is the only one we would ever have any chance of terraforming into something like Earth.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  So we can't pump anything in there?

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it is something, we don't know about it yet, and it would take long time to accomplish that.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  It seems like we waste a lot of time on other things. Couldn't we put a little time into trying to create a backup planet?

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's my point. If we could do that, if we could do that to Mars, then we would have the power to fix Earth. That's how I look at it.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's what I think. No, we'd fix Earth, yeah, but we should still have a backup.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back from the break, we're gonna take a break in a couple of minutes. When we come back, we're gonna find out what that we've got an opposite hypothesis to the Gaia hypothesis. Did you know that that one such thing exists? Did you know about that?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  No, but I'm interested.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Everything's that, tell them what's happening. Everything's happening crazy in the studio right now, and our producers are telling us to go to clips and not go to clips, so we're losing our minds.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we're not losing our minds.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  I am.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna find out, because there was the Gaia hypothesis, saying Earth is his protective mother.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Is it Gaia or Gaia?

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, Gaia, Gaia.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so they're saying it's his protective mother who will take care of it, of itself.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Protect, it would take, it would take care of its own. It would take care of its own, advanced by James Lovelock. But, but Peter Ward is suggesting that Earth is a deadly force unto itself, and you cannot possibly call it Gaia. And so he's come up with another kind of hypothesis, and he has named it. And we will find out.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What that will be.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, here with my comedic co-host, Lynn Koplitz. We're talking about all the ways Earth wants to kill us. And we're getting clips from my interview with Peter Ward. Peter Ward, the paleontologist from the University of Washington, who's made a career out of thinking up, dreaming up ways Earth wants to kill us.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  So have the Baptists.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point. So he, he, he didn't invent the concept. Uh, he decided to come back.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  My pastor's gonna call me now, I'm gonna get in trouble.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the, the Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a protectorate mother and he had a whole other point of view on this. And let's find out where he's coming from.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Medea was Jason's wife, Jason and the Argonauts, the great legends.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that movie.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Uh, I did too, with the skeletons. Yeah, the old version.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was like the last of the great.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Stop action.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop action models of skeletons and creatures and things, but she was married to Jason?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, she was a sorceress. Her father, King Aetes, was in charge of the golden fleece, which had been stolen from the Greeks. The Greeks sent all their heroes to bring it back. Now, why they fought so much over this fleece? That part is lost in the midst of time, but Jason went out, stole the fleece, stole Medea, who was the woman who tended the fleece, brought her back, and then promptly went out and cheated on her. And she was so upset about this, having had two of his children already, that bad mother, she went out and slew her children with a knife to spite the bad husband.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, because we normally think of the mother protecting children no matter what, and she's just got really pissed off, apparently.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the analogy here is that if we look at deep earth history, life hasn't been this wonderful thing that makes the planet better and better. Life is perpetually suicidal. We see life trying to kill itself off and doing a really good job at it, over and over and over.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what do you make of that?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  He's completely wrong. First of all, Medea was not a bad mother. Medea was completely understood. It was very Fatal Attraction-y.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  What happened was Jason was an idiot and told her, after all, she leaves her father, her family, everything. She was like a princess.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And Jason tells her, listen, I found another woman and she's younger. That's what made Medea lose it.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's what pissed her off.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she was like, fine, you want the younger woman, take her, but you're not gonna have children. I'm killing them. Which was not right. I'm not saying she was right. So now what I wanna know.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, so you, you've got your hypothesis going now. You're on a roll.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Right, so what I wanna know is Ward saying.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peter Ward.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Peter Ward. I'm calling him Ward because I don't agree with him now. He, he's saying, who is he saying is Jason? He's saying the, the Earth is Medea?

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's saying, he's saying Earth is Medea, ready to kill its children.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  And we are.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are the children on the earth.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  No, I think we're, we're Jason in that metaphor. Because we're the ones who are ignoring and being ignorant of Earth and not paying attention to the signs she's sending us. And she's like, alright, fine. You wanna stay here with your new moons and all that crap? Go ahead. I'm just gonna have you, this Earth won't look like it did when you thought you loved it. I'll kill everything.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wrath.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so then all the vegetation and everything that lives here are the kids, are the children.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wrath of Medea scares the Jesus out of me. I, I, it's, you're mixing mythology with real, with real biology. I, I guess there's a lot of room there.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  No, Ward started it.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That's, that's fine. That's fine.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I'm able to tweet if I'm wrong. I'm not wrong.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Peter Ward actually has a book and he published a book in 2009 called.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Don't say it like that, like Lynn doesn't have a book. Peter Ward actually has a book.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got a book. It's called The Medea Hypothesis. And so in it, he describes what it takes in order to create this environment that.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Christians have a book too. It's called the Bible, but you don't believe in the rapture.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This one, you wanna hear a rapture story? Check this out. So here's what happens. In a global warming scenario, the air temperature rises and the temperature difference between the equator and the poles drops. Okay? And if that drops, you don't have what we call a temperature gradient to drive ocean currents. And one of the, one of the more important ocean currents is top water goes north, let's say along the east coast. It gets to the North Sea, drops down and cycles back along the bottom. Well, all the water that, that, that, that rode along the top became oxygenated by its contact with the air. When it sinks to the bottom, it brings the oxygen with it. So if you're living on the bottom of the ocean, a fresh supply of oxygen is coming to you all the time.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you stop the ocean currents, you stop the oxygen supply and you kill every oxygen breathing creature at the bottom of the ocean. And their ecosystem gets replaced by anaerobic bacteria.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  That does not sound good.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  I'm not a scientist, but anaerobic bacteria does not sound pleasant.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anaerobic bacteria is bad. And we should find out what more Peter Ward has to say. But let me just tell you anaerobic bacteria, one of the byproducts of anaerobic bacteria is hydrogen sulfide, which we all know, even if you don't know its chemical symbol, even if you've never heard it, you have smelled it before. It's the smell.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that's the gassy stuff.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's that smell of rotten eggs. It's nasty.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  The flatulence.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, egg flatulence. It's the flatulence of any creature that has anaerobic bacteria going on in its digestive tract.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Or anyone in Alabama who has sulfur water.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What in Alabama?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Like well water, well water. We always had well water.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sulfur, yeah, you can smell rotten eggs in there. Yeah, yeah, there's your, and hydrogen sulfide would make that, would give you that smell. So let's go to, let's find out what next Peter Ward has to tell us about this Medea hypothesis.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Let's have a little jar and put in a little food and put in some beetles. And the beetles start eating the food, it's wow, this is great. And they eat the food and eat the food and eat the food. And they reproduce like crazy and there's more and more beetles and less and less food. Do the beetles ever stop and say, oh my gosh, maybe if we reduce our population, we can last a little bit longer? No, they eat the food till the food is gone, then they all die out. And that's the principle by which life works. Life produces itself, reproduces to the point that it just overwhelms its system and kills itself.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're telling me there's no harmony? What predator prey, they self-regulate, don't they? If there are too many tigers, then there's not enough prey. So then fewer tigers are born, the prey comes back. We've known about this equilibrium for a long time. So now you're telling me that Earth is in disequilibrium?

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Life is in total disequilibrium. This whole predator prey business, I think you're, you're looking at the short term. If you look at the long term, 99.999% of all species that have ever been are gone, they're extinct. Lots and lots of those are extinct because a better predator came along and the prey never could evolve a solution to it. And very quickly they are extinct.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so the Medea hypothesis suggests that Earth is not this loving, caring, mother, nature Earth, but that in fact, Earth and life on it is hostile to Earth and life on it.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. It's not just Earth life. Medea is everywhere. All life in the universe would probably operate by these principles. And the reason being, if we look at the NASA definition of life, it replicates.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know what that is. And I used to like hang out with NASA. So what's NASA's definition of life?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  It's a three-parter. It replicates, it metabolizes, and it evolves. And the evolution, simply said, is...

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that by that definition, a star is alive. Because they reproduce themselves, they have a metabolism, and they evolve.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  And that's actually been said by several quarters, saying, gee, you include stars, you could also include crystals. But that said, evolution is that creatures produce more than the environment can sustain, and therefore the best ones survive. But if that is a basic tenet of life, then life of course will be Medean in this regard.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so you're just bumming everybody out now. You're telling we'll all just go extinct?

• 21:39Speaker 03

  No, no, no. There's one great solution.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  The only out in the universe is intelligence. Intelligence gets you out of this nasty Medean cycle.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a lot going on there. A lot going on there. Do you realize that there's certain parts of the world where algae can overgrow because of some nutrient that goes into their food supply? And when it overgrows, it can choke other life forms that might exist in that area.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Okay, this is interesting. This is my question.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what's that?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I lived in Florida growing up. I lived on the Gulf in Sarasota, Florida. And we would have Red Tide. You know what I'm talking about? And all the fish would die. I mean, it was very biblical, like it was scary. And it would happen, it happens all the time.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they occur regularly in the Gulf Coast.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  You can't go outside or anything. And people would asthma, have to say, what is that? Is that the algae? Because I remember as a kid being told it was bacteria.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's certain types of microscopic algae that release toxins, that kills fish and other animals, and we can be harmed by those as well. And that cycling is something that you see. It's one of the, one of the ways Earth wants to kill us.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  So that is what Red Tide is?

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly what Red Tide is.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  But can you stop it?

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you'd have to get into the cycling of the ecosystem in order to interfere with that, and that could be dangerous initially if you don't really understand all the forces that are operating on it. You could have unintended consequences.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. So this brings me to my next thing.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  You know how like people are using antibacterial soap?

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never do.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Right, because it kills off good bacteria. I mean, because some bacteria is good, right?

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because my problem with antibacterial soap is that it doesn't kill all the bacteria. And if there's some bacteria that survives, it is resistant to your soap. And then you create this super bacteria. I belong to a health, a fitness center. They're cleaning stuff all the time. And I'm ready for a super bacteria to come out of fitness centers that is resistant to everything and takes us out the fittest people first.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  So am I right in asking that that's what you're saying could happen if they start messing with like the algae in the ocean?

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever that imbalance is, if you try to create a balance out of it, you could create another imbalance that you did not otherwise.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And could be even bigger.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could be even a bigger imbalance.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  With feet and teeth.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With feet and teeth. That's right. So, we have these...

• 23:48Speaker 01

  I'm fine with it. Just leave it. We'll get it later. It's fine. We're used to red tide.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bought a place in the country a few years ago, and I thought, oh, I live in the city, let me go in the country. And I'm out there. One year, there were like locusts. The next year, there were caterpillars. The next year, there were these little, little stink bugs, these little round stink bugs. And I thought to myself...

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Those are weird, those stink bugs.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nature is not in balance. We keep thinking that there's some happy equilibrium out there. And all I saw was one year after the next, something overrunning something else. And this is the middle of the woods I'm talking about.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, after the break, we'll get back to the whole story of hydrogen sulfide. This is StarTalk Radio.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the subject today are all the way Earth wants to kill us. And I've been interviewing from a clip a couple of months ago when Peter Ward was in town. He's a paleontologist specializing in the way life can go out of equilibrium and try to kill us. And that's when you think about it, it's not that, it's not that weird when you think of all the deadly weapons that animals have to kill other animals.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you still got me stuck when you were talking about your summer home and how every time you go back there, your country home, every time you go there, the different animals have taken over.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Different creatures, they're so out of equilibrium, I can't believe it.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Stink bugs are gone and then the ladybugs come and then, so my question is, are they killing each other or are they just showing up and kind of running each other out? Is it like the Puerto Rican Day Parade here in New York?

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  It's not like it's killing anybody, but when it shows up, the Puerto Rican, like everyone goes to the country, goes out to the Hamptons because it's just so obnoxious.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  And loud, so the ladybugs come in and they're like.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so the, so the other residents escape.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  They just take off, like they don't destroy, they don't, they don't.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  During the ladybug parade and during the caterpillar parade and during the stink bug parade.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Right, it's like New York, the Puerto Rican Day Parade or the gay pride parade. It's not that no one likes it, it's just that it's so, so en masse.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll have to investigate, but it's just a matter of what the numbers are and how they, how they come in and out.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  So it is just some, it is that, they're not killing each other, they're just coming in en masse.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think they're killing each other, but I was just simply struck by how out of equilibrium nature in fact really is.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  What else?

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to what we've always been told by others. And there are other ways we're killing ourselves. Of course, we're releasing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere and that's creating a climate shift that is altering Earth's average temperature. And by the way, we have evidence of what carbon dioxide can do to a planet. We've got planet Venus. It is sitting to our left as we orbit the sun. It is 98% carbon dioxide atmosphere, it's nearly 100 times atmospheric pressure here on Earth, and it is 900 degrees Fahrenheit on Venus. And I did the math, you can cook a 16 inch pepperoni pizza in nine seconds if you just put it out on the windowsill.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  That doesn't sound bad.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except you would cook right alongside it, so.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, that's all, I'm sorry. You lost me at pizza.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little detail there, I'm sorry.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  You lost me at pizza.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what Peter Ward actually has to say about what bacteria does when it makes hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is one of the deadliest gases known to man. We're gonna melt the ice caps from global warming.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weather gets bad.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have to run for the hills.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  But there's worse things.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even worse than that?

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Much worse.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  So what's the worst thing that global warming can do?

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As far as most people understand, you can't go to the beaches anymore.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  But how bad could it be, really? You know, if Alaska's the new Hawaii, how bad could it be?

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that 70% of the world's population lives on the coastline, so...

• 27:43Speaker 03

  Look, humans can climb, everybody can get better shape. Just head for the high ground, you know?

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new real estate boom. Alright, so...

• 27:49Speaker 03

  No, the past is littered with dead bodies that come from short terms of actually poison gas attack that is a consequence of global warming.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't remember learning about this. So where do you get the poison gas?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Poison gas comes from bacteria that grow in the ocean if we remove all oxygen from the ocean. Now look, there's another movie here, The Day After Tomorrow. You remember that movie?

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, where they break an ocean current.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  And everybody freezes out, except for New York, which gets hit by a tidal wave. Well, breaking the ocean currents is right, it will cause catastrophe.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People don't talk much about ocean currents.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  It didn't get cold, it got warm.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Finding Nemo, ocean currents played a big role in getting around the ocean.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  I remember those turtles.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some cool surfing turtles.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Dude. So the bad news about global warming is if we remove oxygen from the bottom of the sea, which happens after global warming. Look, when the oceans become really warm, warm doesn't hold oxygen, cold holds oxygen.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, plus, non-moving water doesn't mix with oxygen, as any fish tank owner knows.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take the bubbles out of the fish tank, you kill your fish.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  So let's turn all our oceans into a big, sort of, warm cesspool.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  And they do, just like a fish tank, they go all green on you.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  And the nasty bacteria start growing.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now what?

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Except, these nasty bacteria produce flatulence.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You tell me how farting bacteria, I'm sorry.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  It's hard to say this with a straight face, but the same chemical.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to say that.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Flatus is essentially hydrogen sulfide.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know hydrogen sulfide, you get it in rotten eggs.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Very deadly, deadly gas.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but, but no one knows, thinks it's deadly, we just think it smells bad.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  It smells bad because it's so deadly to us. We are detecting the tiniest, tiniest, very few molecules floating around, you know it. We've come from a long history of exposure to this stuff in the past, mass extinction.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we've evolved to not like the smell.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  We've evolved to run.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To run away from it.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  We know this, how dangerous this is. Our lineage, the mammals, go back 300 million years, we have repeatedly been gassed by this stuff. We are the survivors of a number of hydrogen sulfide gas attacks.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To smell it at a level that doesn't kill us.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  That's right, and 200 parts per million, 10 times what you can smell will kill you.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's bad.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  And that was the level that appears to have happened at least 12 times in the past 500 million years, due to global warming.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're telling me now, as global warming continues from our own actions, after we run to the hills, the earth then smells like somebody's freshly used toilet.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we die.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Uh, if it gets high enough, yeah. And just because there's humans now, there were never humans any time in the past of these events. 100 million years ago is the last of these.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're egging on this, no pun intended, we're egging on this process. We're sort of accelerating a cycle that has happened multiple times before.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Something rotten in the state of Denmark, except it's the whole world.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  What does that mean? Could you kill someone with your gas?

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, evidently, yes.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  So you can't Dutch oven somebody?

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, well, what happens is, you, the smell is so evil, at a concentration much less than what will kill you, that you run away from it and then you don't die. So, so.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I don't understand that.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you look at OSHA, OSHA, the Office of Occupational Safety Hazards Office, uh, I forgot what the full acronym is, but it's a government office that regulates how, all of the chemicals that might be in scientific laboratories. And. The part of their, their book that describes deadly gases. The one that's the scariest are the ones where when it's at a highest, high enough concentration for you to smell it, you're already past the deadly dose of it. That would be bad, right? And that, so you, we have no defenses against those gases. Hydrogen sulfide, fortunately, and according to Peter Ward, we have millions of years of mammalian evolution that allows us to detect it and say that it smells bad at a

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  level way before it kills us. And if anyone who said, wow, this rotten egg hydrogen sulfide smell is, smells like perfume, I want more of it, they simply died and didn't pass their genes on to a next generation.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Once I was cleaning a gutter in LA, like the sewage system.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  I know.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is before your comedian career.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  I've had a lot of, I've had a lot of really glamorous jobs.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  And we had, you had to drop a thing down there and test it because of the gas before you go down in the manhole.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And what kind of gas was that?

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would, that would be gases generated in anaerobic situations, which would have included hydrogen sulfide.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Okay, because you can't smell that gas.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you can smell it, but there are other gases that you might not be able to smell that are produced down there and that, they're trying to keep you alive. Let's find out, he made a judgment as to how soon this will occur, the next year, 10 years, let's find out what Peter Ward says about.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Come on, Peter.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When hydrogen sulfide is going to take us out.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  We have certainly a scenario now with the atmosphere increasing in its carbon dioxide content that mimics every one of these episodes that happened in the past that were deadly fatal.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you kill life in the ocean first.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you do that because the whole world gets hot.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's hot in the poles as well as the equator. You lose your winds, you lose your ocean currents, and you don't mix your water with the oxygen.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  It's your little tank again, turning all green and slimy, and if you have the snails in it, they multiply like crazy and then they all die, and then you don't want to go near it and your mom's screaming at you, clean out the fish tank.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one lesson here would be to tell anyone to turn off their bubbling machine in their fish tank if they want to get an understanding of what the future of the earth will be like.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Well, if you'd like to see stuff die, yes, I personally take the opposite tack. Double, double bubble.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if that's the case, you know, you can kill all your fish in a couple of days doing this, how long will it take this to happen to Earth?

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Well, that's why probably no one will care because this might happen over the next couple of thousand years.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know elected official right now would care.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  There you are. We as a species better really care.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me, Peter, how soon will this happen and what should we do about it?

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Well, the first worst parts are going to be the rise in sea level, but that's just the first step. And then we have these bacteria starting to take over the oceans. Probably within the next century to two centuries, we'll really see the oceans begin to change state.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When do we begin to smell like somebody's toilet?

• 33:54Speaker 03

  Um, I would say within at least 500 to 1,000 years, it'll be very noticeable.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so in the time that has passed since Columbus sailed, that much time into the future could lead to a situation where all beachgoers will now be associated with the smell of flatulence.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  People of that time will notice the change. Yes.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is scary.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  It's a very rapid, very catastrophic, and it's happened over and over in the past.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. So Lynn, do you realize this hydrogen sulfide, which before the break, we were talking about how stinky it is and how deadly it is, it actually has a couple of positive applications? I don't know if you knew about this. Really? There's still research going on in the lab, but at particular concentrations of it, it was shown just, just in 2005, that mice can be put in a state of suspended animation by applying a low dose of hydrogen sulfide to the air they breathe. And what happened? Their breathing rate dropped from 120 to 10 breaths per minute. And their temperature fell from normal sort of mammal body temperature down to near freezing.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the effect became

• 35:35Speaker 01

  And that's good?

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cold blooded.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mice survived that. Obviously, we put it in a cold environment to watch what would happen. The mice survived that for six hours and showed no negative signs of health consequences. And so it's just an interesting fact. Another phenomenon is in 2008, it was shown that you can induce hypothermia in rats by exposing them to hydrogen sulfide. And why would you want to do this?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  He saw my look on my face.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look on your face. Because hypothermia is a condition where you might want to put your body in if you somehow died and we need to get you to the operating table to bring you back to life. Because if something really bad happened to your

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I just got so rude in my own head, like, we need gas, somebody gas, who had beans? She's dying, somebody gas her.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't know. So there's still a lot of interesting biophysics going, biochemistry going on with hydrogen sulfide.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So just to keep, watch that space. So the point is, if we're messing up the earth and earth will render us extinct by what we do to earth, then what we really need are major sort of geoengineering projects to undo the bad that we're doing. And terraforming is one such, a version of terraforming.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Where we Algorify stuff?

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Algorify. I love new words with Algor in the word. So terraforming specifically is turning a non fertile planet into a fertile planet. Sure. But if you have the power to do that, perhaps you have the power to get rid of the carbon dioxide, or to introduce some other gases, or to increase or decrease the oxygen levels. There must be ways to master earth such that

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Like artificially inseminate earth?

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Well, you said we're gonna make it more fertile when it hasn't been fertile.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, or, or, no, that, that would be a planet that has no fertility at all. Yes. So, in fact, terraforming is, is, is sort of like artificially inseminating. No, no, no, but, no, no, I, I'm backing back up to Mars. If you want to terraform Mars and make it a, a habitable, green planet, conceptually, it's sort of like artificially inseminating Mars. Yes, yes.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  So I'm not so stupid.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't say you were stupid. You're the one who said, I'm just saying.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  No, it's just that this negative show has gotten everyone a little upset.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But on Earth, we don't need to inseminate it because it's already filled with life. We don't, we want to protect the life that would end up extinct in the next extinction episode. That's all I'm saying.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  He'll just fill the room with gas and I'm starting to go into hypothermia. I can't talk.

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's finish out my interview with professor of paleontology at the University of Washington in Seattle, Peter Ward, to find out just what is the answer to, how do you solve this? What?

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quickly, let's go to clip.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  I guess I have a reaction against this idea that if we just simply abandon civilization and give ourselves back to nature and let nature take over and run rampant, kind of like the Ellen Weisman, the world without us, everything will go green again and all our troubles are over.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean if the new age movement took over the world?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and the whole environmental movement is predicated on the fact that all we humans have to do is go back to the way it was, that we came along and kind of screwed everything up in the garden and let the garden regrow and things are fine. And I totally reject that point of view for several reasons.

• 39:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they don't say that we all move back into caves, are they? They're just saying, eat a little greener and drive a little greener. Isn't that right?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Well, I come from the Pacific Northwest and indeed, they say we should go back into caves. There's, there is really a, a strong movement, the back to the cave movement and toss all your stuff away. And personally, Gore-Tex really works well in the climate I live in. I think it's, it's just crazy to think with 6.5 billion people that we can drop civilization to the point that Mother Nature or Mother Gaia, as this Gaia hypothesis would have us think, takes over and, and rescues us. It's really that. It's, let's go back to nature and be rescued from our own folly.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be rescued. This is the...

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will nature rescue us?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I'm not allowed to talk anymore.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? After that? Before the break?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  I'm a little out of control today, I've been told.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's alright. So, so the point is, if he's trying to protect us, and one way is to prevent the CO2 going into the atmosphere. So, you want to find sustainable energy. Nuclear power is one of them, but nuclear is one of the other N-words that people like to avoid in popular parlance. And so, but it's a means of producing energy that we so desperately need, that does not have CO2 as a byproduct, that would then kill us in hydrogen sulfide baths, hydrogen sulfide gas chambers. By the way, you know, hydrogen sulfide is more potent, or as potent, as is the gas they used in gas chambers back in prisons when they gas.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Okay, before the show's over, can we say something happy and uplifting? This is horrible. I was like, when's it gonna get happy? And then, let's talk about gas chambers.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Well, there's hydrogen fuel. It's a hydrogen, you get that, hydrogen is all over the place. You get that in water, H2O, right? I mean, this is where you just, you.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Can we do it in the way we're building, like, doing things green, so to speak? What does that mean?

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, green buildings, right. Are there ways that are very, that are very efficient in how they use energy? They don't lose energy to the air, out to the sky, the water sources are purified, the air is circulated.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  And buying those new green light bulbs, I use those.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you use less energy, all of that helps, all of that helps, so that you don't make the carbon dioxide, so that Earth doesn't warm, so that you don't stop the oceanic currents, so that the anaerobic bacteria at the bottom of the ocean don't poison us.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And we all need to do it, that's the problem. Not everybody does, like, we all need to do it.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you do it and your neighbor doesn't, it's like, what's, what's the point?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  What's the point? We all need to do it.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because we're all.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Mom, if you're listening to the show, mom?

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're all in this chemistry experiment, together. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.